Team Fighting Championship Makes UFC Look Like a Pillow Fight

We're talking ten dudes melee-ing in epic five-on-five action.

Like team sports and MMA? You no longer have to choose. Team Fighting Championships (TFC) now lets you watch not two guys duke it out in the ring, but ten dudes meleeing in epic five-on-five action. Multiple refs keep the action clean and make sure that the three guys who have just been pounding on some poor sap get off him the second that he taps out.

If you’re a WWE fan, the format is basically like Survivor Series meets a Texas Tornado match. That is to say, there are five guys on either side all in the ring at once who are eliminated one by one. This makes for an interesting end game, with one guy potentially defending himself against a mob attack of five.

Curiously, the fights are over a lot more quickly than you might think. The team dynamic means that once the fight starts going one way, the winning team takes on a lot of momentum. Five on five is one thing. Three on five or four on two is a whole other dynamic. Perhaps that’s why this variation on the MMA theme turns out to be a lot bloodier than your typical UFC fight. Unsurprisingly, this is popular in Eastern Europe, where kids hang off of scaffolding with one hand for kicks.